Communications Majors

Hey CC–
I’m currently facing a difficult decision. I’m only a junior in high school, but I’m having trouble deciding what to major in. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m extremely creative, and I like to work with others and lead people. I’m also extremely ambitious and I want to work in a business environment when I am older. This being said, I’m considering majoring in Media, Culture, and Communications (MCC) with a business-oriented minor in college. However, I’ve caught a lot of flak from my peers and family. Everyone always tells me that MCC is a “jock major” for lazy people, and that it is too easy to be taken seriously. I want to challenge myself in school (my first-choice is NYU Steinhardt), and I want to pursue an MBA afterwards and work in Marketing. This being said, I’m worried that the major I want to pursue won’t get me anywhere in life outside of college.

I’m extremely Type-A, and I really want to work my way up the business ladder in marketing, and I’m very passionate about my intended major, MCC. Just worried that employers will not take me seriously…

Thoughts???

Well, first of all, you are a junior in high school. You don’t have to decide on your major right now. I must have changed my intended college major about 20 times between late junior year of high school and the beginning of college, and none of the ideas I had were actually what I majored in.

Second of all, I’m assuming by your peers you mean your other friends in high school. And what do they know? They’re not in college yet, either. They’re simply parroting back stereotypes and ideas they’ve gotten from who knows where. Ignore them.

I don’t understand this (what seems to be) relatively new obsession with “hard” majors, hard in difficulty, that is. If you listened to people talk, you’d think that only computer science and engineering majors - and maybe a handful of math and physics majors - got jobs these days. But that’s just untrue - bordering on absurd. People from all kinds of majors get hired, even the philosophy and history and psychology majors. They get hired to do interesting and varied things that are not in the hard sciences or technology. (And sometimes they do get hired in technology and science fields, because those fields need non-scientists as well to keep them running.)

Think about this. Facebook, one of the most valuable companies in the world, is a MEDIA company first and foremost. What? Yes. The platform exists by helping people connect and consume information and news, and they need people to brainstorm how to do that properly in addition to all of the people who write the code. That’s true of lots of social media and application companies like Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc. They didn’t get famous because people said “OMG, look at that beautiful code,” they got famous because they connected people and transformed our culture in interesting ways. Or what about Nielsen, the market research company that does the TV ratings? Television and entertainment is a multibillion-dollar field and they need people to plan their programming and connect with audiences. ABC, Turner Broadcasting, NBC, TLC, all of these channels have people who do that kind of work. And any large company on the planet has people planning their public relations strategy and how they message new developments. I work in the video game industry and the way new announcements are planned and marketed takes weeks, sometimes months, to get right. The developers aren’t doing that - these are people who are trained in marketing and communications.

The vast majority of people who say it’s a “jock” major have no idea what they are talking about because they haven’t taken a single class in the major. They’re also operating on stereotypes and assumptions that probably aren’t true about employment of people with non-technology/engineering majors.

But most importantly, you have to live your life for YOU. That’s probably one of the most important lessons you can learn in college and your early professional life. YOU are the one who has to get up every day and take the classes - not your peers and not your family. You’re the one who has to get up every day and go to that job. Do you want to take classes you hate and work a job you’re miserable in (or simply don’t like) because you’re afraid of what your peers and family think?